EDUCATION AND SOCIETY

…every society sets up a certain ideal of man, of what he should be, as much from the intellectual point of view as the physical and moral. This ideal is, in some degree, the same for all members of society; but it also becomes differentiated beyond a certain point, according to the specific groupings that every society contains in its structure. It is this ideal, which is both integral and diverse, that is the focus of education. Its function, then, is to develop in the child: (1) a certain number of physical and mental states that the society to which he belongs considers should be possessed by all of its members; (2) certain physical and mental states that the particular social group (caste, class, family, profession) similarly considers ought to be possessed by all those who compose it. Thus both society as a whole and each particular social grouping determine the ideal that education realises. Society can survive only if there exists among its members a sufficient degree of homogeneity; education perpetuates and reinforces this homogeneity by fixing in the mind of the child, from the beginning, the essential similarities that social life demands. But on the other hand, without a certain diversity all co-operation would be impossible; education ensures the persistence of this necessary diversity by being itself diversified and specialised. If the society has reached a degree of development whereby the old divisions into castes and classes can no longer be maintained, it will prescribe an education more uniform at its base.